The Monster in the Garden
by Pirate-on-Fleet-Street
Summary: A one-shot featuring Davy Jones and Elizabeth as a young girl. Elizabeth faces the monster trespassing in her garden. PAIRINGS CHALLENGE no.4


**In September of 2009 my friend Stutley Constable expressed an interest in writing a few oneshots with unusual pairings (ones that are not Sparrabeth or Willabeth). We decided that it would be fun to cooperate on such an undertaking. This story and eleven others are the products of that venture. We hope you will enjoy them.**

~Davy Jones and Elizabeth~

**The Monster in the Garden**

It was a fairly large house with a slight lean towards the sea. When he first stepped foot in the clear substance and the sand underneath his boot swirled up to cloud the water, he felt the peace of the place. His peg led slid smoothly into the liquid and lodged itself neatly in the sand, stirring up a cluster of small red fish. He stood for a moment and looked over the white beach. There wasn't much to learn from the view. It told him nothing.

_The Dutchman _bobbed quietly a hundred yards out and he carelessly dropped the rope for the row boat which was bumping the land beside him and waded his way to dry sand. He was rather annoyed that his directions had led him astray and his temper was short. The sun was shining down through a heavy storm cloud and he wondered with half a mind if it would rain as heavily today as it had last night.

He could feel the rage building up within and he looked towards the big white house. Why not terrorize a plump rich Squire into giving him dinner? At least he would be getting something from this pointless stop.

He started towards the manor, his eyes dark and his face drawn into a sharp expression of anger and greed. He would strangle his crew when he got back to _The Dutchman _for their folly. There wasn't even someone to row him back, as he had forbidden his crew to accompany him.

The garden that complimented the house ran out an acre beside the Hall and when he first stepped into it he disturbed a bush of purple petals which let out a stink of perfume. There seemed to be a path zigzagging through the flowers and bushes but he was short on patience that day. He carelessly cut a path right through the center of it, his final goal being the front of the house. As he was making his path of destruction through the colourful garden he heard a crunch that wasn't plant-like, followed by a shocked gasp.

He froze and jerked his peg leg up to reveal a crushed wooden carving. There was a small hand sticking out from under a large blue bush, pale and soft. He leaned over and lifted the top cover of the bush to reveal a wide-eyed little girl. She stared up at him with an open mouth, kneeling in the damp earth. Her rosy lips formed a perfect O of shock. She had water droplets in her hair and the round baby face of a child.

He grunted and his beard twitched. He glanced from the girl to the broken toy, carefully lowering his leg to rest behind it. He slowly reached to the ground and swept up the wood piece, cautiously glancing at the girl again. She scrambled out from under the bush and stood quickly. Her curls bounced as she reached out a small hand towards his and they fell forward to frame her face. He laid the toy in her hand then took his own back quickly before they could make contact.

She looked at it with a frown and he saw that it was a ship. Or had been. A single tear gleamed in her bright child eyes and he watched her silently, guiltily. His anger had gone, replaced by a simple discomfort.

The girl looked up at him again. "Who are you?" She asked and he glanced at the house.

"Davy Jones," he replied quickly, swallowing. His lips twitched as he looked around the rest of the garden.

"Davy Jones," she repeated. "Are there others like you?"

He turned his attention back to her. "Other what?"

She bit her lip and looked up at him with both curiosity and fear. "Others like you."

"Monsters?" He asked bluntly and his bitterness returned.

She shrunk back slightly and looked at the broken pieces in her palm.

"You're a monster?" She whispered.

"Doesn't it appear so?" He asked harshly. He looked again at the house, expecting someone to be looking for her soon. She kept her head down but when he looked back at her he could see her tiny lips curl up slowly at the corners.

Then she jerked her head up and her expression was one of pure delight.

"Can I keep you?" She asked excitedly.

His beard of tentacles snapped back at the ridiculous suggestion.

"Oh please," She begged. "Mama said that I could have a dog when I turn six. That isn't until next month but I'm sure she wouldn't mind if it wasn't a puppy. And it's not so early. Do you think it's too early?"

"I can't stay here, girl," he said, laughing harshly at the mere thought of it.

The girl fell silent.

"Tell me, what's your name?" Jones asked, now feeling somewhat bad for making her frown.

"Elizabeth," she sulked.

"Elizabeth... that's a good name," he said, distracted by the sight of a maid passing by one of the side windows of the house. He would have to surprise them if he wanted to scare them.

"Most people would say it's a pretty name," she said quietly, talking with her chin tucked into her chest, hiding her face.

"It is a very pretty name," he corrected himself hastily. "You see, I'm not around normal people very often so you must accept my _most _sincere apologies."

"You're with the other monsters usually?" The gleam was back in her eyes and her golden curls bobbed with her furious head movements.

He flinched at the choice of word, although he had said it himself.

"I'm always at sea, I don't often meet new people."

"So you're a monster officer?"

"No, I'm—"

"A lieutenant? Are you a captain?" She asked eagerly and in her excitement she grabbed his hand. The smile faded slowly off her lips and she raised their hands to her eye level. She stared in quiet wonder at the differences between them and he slid his out of hers first, withdrawing his tentacles.

"No. I'm not," his voice was hard.

She tilted her head to look at him. She whispered loudly, "Then what are you? I promise I won't tell."

His felt himself soften again. "I'm a..." But the word escaped him. Ferry man? Sailor? Dead man? "I'm a pirate," he threw out.

"A pirate," Elizabeth said in awe. Then her eyebrows came together and her sweet face puckered in thought. "What's that?"

_Not what I am_, he thought. "A free man, a man of the sea. Outside the law, outside the confinement of petty society. A man who can go anywhere he wishes, can do anything he wants," he said and his voice turned bitter as his thoughts turned dark. Freedom was not something he had.

Elizabeth's eyes were so wide that the entire sky could have been reflected on the shiny brown surfaces of those gems. She exposed her small white teeth in a big smile and he thought that if she opened her eyes any bigger and smiled any wider the rest of her face would be lost in them.

"Are pirates rich?"

"Many are."

"And is it only men?"

"Yes... well I suppose there are some women in the... business."

"I want to be a pirate too then! Oh you really must come home and explain it all to Mama. You make it sound so wonderful!"

"I'm sure you could be a pirate," he said, knowing that she would forget in a week that she ever heard of such a thing. She would wake from sleep the next morning and think him a dream. "But I can't go home with you," he repeated and glanced worriedly at the house.

"Why not?" she asked sweetly and smiled innocently up at him.

"I'll tell you a secret," he said with a sigh and crouched down to her level. "I can't go home to your Mama because adults despise people like me. They would destroy people like me the first chance they got. They're afraid."

"But you're not a person, you're a monster," she said simply and while she was still confused he had straightened his back and was glaring down at her in anger.

"Haven't you ever heard stories about monsters then?" he growled.

She shrank back and stepped out of his shadow into the sunlight, fear replacing the happy excitement from moments ago.

"Monsters are dangerous, child. Monsters bite and tear things apart. What I did to your toy any monster could do to a little girl. I could break you into pieces right now."

Elizabeth was petrified, her hands grabbing her filthy skirts in tight fistfuls as she stumbled backwards.

Jones bit his tongue. He bit back his rage and swallowed it, remembering himself.

"You see Miss Elizabeth; we can't be friends, you and I," he said quietly. "A monster will always be a monster. Little girls don't keep the monsters under their beds once they've found them. Not in any of the stories. Instead, they grow up and forget about them. It's how they drive them off. Nobody keeps a monster as they keep a dog. Nobody loves a monster as they love a dog."

Elizabeth stood there for several moments longer, staring up at the angry green monster in her garden. "You weren't a monster at the start of our talk. I think you just got lost somewhere," she said sadly. Then she turned and was running, running, running away from him to her house and mama, the broken toy clutched in her hand the only proof that he had ever been.

* * *

"Ha ha," Davy Jones laughed cruelly and spun around to see his heart, a dagger poised intently over it. It wavered and it shook in the holder's hesitancy. He was waiting for the plunge, thinking that the man who held his life in his hands could do it if he wanted to. With every passing second though he became more certain that he wouldn't. He felt nothing.

When he did eventually feel the sharp pain of the blade sliding into his heart and pinning it to the cold wet deck of his beloved ship, he realized that he had been waiting all along for this moment. He knew that his life couldn't last forever.

Nobody keeps a monster once they've found it.

They banish it.

A young woman had already forgotten the monster of her dream long ago, when a monster could be loved as a dog. She would remember this monster before her now with the hard thoughts and memories of a grown woman and know that monsters could not be loved, that they must be destroyed. Monsters break things.

Nobody keeps a monster once they've found it.

They kill it.

Forget it.

Move on.

**Thank you for reading! :)**

**If you enjoyed this story and wish to read the other ones of the collection.  
in this challenge you can find them on my profile and on Stutley Constable's** fanfiction(dot)net/u/1963348/Stutley_Constable **(replace the dot)**


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